Hoggee Read Online Free Page B

child was always the leader at home. Something, he decided, was wrong with the girl Sarah. She must not be right in the head, addled. Yet, she didn’t seem disturbed. He hurt for the skater, who moved so beautifully but had to be led by the hand of her mother or sisters.
    He knew he should leave, go back to the barn or to the tavern to wait for scraps, but he was reluctant to move. At one point, Laura stopped skating and went to a basket they had set beside the pond. She took out bread and pieces of meat. This time both Sarah and Grace skated to her, and Laura handed out food to them.
    Howard had not tasted food at all that day and had eaten only a few scraps from the inn the day before. His mouth watered with hunger. The girls seemed to have plenty, and he wondered if they would share if he called out to them. But remembering how Laura had acted toward him, he doubted it.
    As they ate, bits of conversation drifted to him, but he could not understand any of their words. Once, the girl Sarah turned suddenly. For a split second, Howard felt her eyes on him. He dropped behind the tree, hoping she had not really seen him.
    Not long after that, they left. He saw that Sarah had forgotten her muffler, left lying on a rock where they had stood eating. Deciding to retrieve the muffler and take it to the girls’ mother, he was about to leave his spot behind the tree when Sarah ran back for the muffler. She looked for a long moment toward the tree where Howard hid. Then she lifted the muffler from the rock.In its place she laid a slice of bread and a piece of meat, which she removed from her coat pocket.
    â€œShe knows I’m here,” he whispered to himself in amazement. “She knows I’m here, and she wants to give me food.” He stepped from his hiding place and called to her. “Sarah.” She did not look up at him as she took up the muffler and hurried away. Just before she disappeared among the pine trees on the other side of the pond, she stopped. Turning back to stare across at Howard, she stood still for a moment. Then she lifted her hand and waved it slightly.
    Howard, too, lifted his arm to wave, but she was gone; like a startled deer, she ran into the trees. For a long time he stood staring after her, wondering.
    Back at the barn, he took up his board, opened his knife, and carved. It felt strange, writing that he had a friend. There had been playmates at school when he was younger and boys on the canal with whom he had joked, but a friend was different. Howard believed that somehow he and Sarah had communicated, had acknowledged each other’s suffering. He felt a strength grow inside him that had not been there for a long time. Looking down at his carved message, he drew himself up to sit very straight.
    Sarah’s gift was all he had to eat that day. At the inn, Howard waited in the cold shadows for a long time. Finally, the cook opened the door and threw out a plate of scraps, mostly crusts of bread. When the door closed, the boy sprang toward the food, but suddenly two big dogs blocked his way. Howard spotted a piece of potato worth fighting for. In a flash he bent, grabbed up a handful of stones, and tossed them at the animals. They growled without even lifting their heads to look in his direction.In a matter of seconds, all morsels of food had been swallowed up.
    On the way back to the barn that night, he lingered even longer than usual, looking at the lamplight streaming through the windows of old Cyrus’s house. Inside was Sarah, the strange girl who had wanted to share her food with him. That did not seem to be the action of a girl whose mind was not right. He would get up his courage, he decided, to ask her grandfather about her.
    Usually Cyrus woke him as he entered, but the next morning Howard was awake under the hay, waiting. The old man had refused Howard’s help with the hay in the past. “It’s my job and my wages,” he had said when Howard had taken up